Responsive Websites

Why is it important to have a responsive website?

Best User Experience:

A well designed responsive web design is the best way for users to interact with your website. Not having a responsive site does not create an optimal experience for the user at hand, and they will most likely never return to the site again (which is known as a bounce rate). Google takes these bounce rates into account with their ranking factors, so if you care about your search engine ranking you want to give the end user the best responsive design possible to lower your bounce rate.

Users should be able to have a seamless experience when navigating your site no matter the device they are using; they need to be able to read text, fill out forms, and find specific areas of your site without frustration. While content is king on any website, it is ultimately the user experience that enables visitors to consume content through the preferred device of their choice.

Multi-Device Users:

Users nowadays don't just have one single device and one single screen size, users have multiple different devices and are returning to websites at different times using these different devices. This means that to best support their experience and keep them as a regular visitor, the site at hand must work perfectly regardless of the different device they may be using. You need to ensure consistency and guarantee that the same content will be accessible on all their devices.

Over 20% of Google searches are performed on a mobile device.

In 2012, more than half of local searches were performed on a mobile device.

In the United States, 25% of internet users only access the internet on a mobile device.

61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience.

25.85% of all emails are opened on mobile phones, and 10.16% are opened on tablets.

According to Google’s Think Insights on mobile, if a user lands on your mobile website and is frustrated or doesn’t see what they are looking for, there’s a 61% chance they will leave immediately and go to another website (most likely a competitor). It’s also said that if they have a positive experience with your mobile website, a user is 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service.

One Single Site for all Devices:

Some websites have a process in place where if the site detects the user is using a mobile device they send them to a separate mobile-optimised version of the site. This becomes problematic for a number of reasons:

Having one website constantly up to date is enough work as it is, now you have two separate websites to keep up to date and relevant with the current times, unintentionally doubling your workload. Also, having this in place also means you have to create another separate site for tablet, yet again increasing your workload once more.

Mobile-only sites created in this fashion are usually very minimalistic and as talked about in 'Multi-Device Users', we need to ensure consistency with the content of the desktop-site and the mobile-site otherwise there is the 61% chance they will just leave immediatedly.

Improved SEO:

Google has preferred responsive sites over mobile sites when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for a while now, and they recommend using responsive web design to support different device sand screens sizes, they even add a 'Mobile Friendly' label to websites that appear in the search results that will perform nicely on a smaller device. Users are more likely to choose the site that is 'Mobile Friendly' rather than the one that is not if they are not looking for a specific website.

Google took this a step in further in April 2015 by rewarding sites that were built responsively, and penalising those that were not.

Futureproofing

By building your website into a responsive site now, you are preparing and giving yourself the best chance to support all the new smaller/bigger devices/screen sizes that will be frequently released in the near future.

Why BR Web is the best company for making your website responsive

R Web Consulting has years of experience in adapting a multitude of different websites for viewing on mobiles and tablets, from small and simple websites to large and complex websites. We take care in every single detail to make sure users get just as good as an experience of viewing your site on their mobile/tablet as they would on their desktop PC.

We've included a few screenshots of websites we've made responsive below:

About us

Based in Hastings, East Sussex, BR Web Consulting Ltd has been designing cutting edge websites since 2005.

We've worked with clients from across the world to deliver everything from extensive corporate web optimisation, to single page redesigns for small businesses.